Who knew that Google and Blogger were buddies?

Apparently they're bed buddies, because I can use the same account name to slip like a sperm between them and then incubate for 9 months and become their googleblogger spawn!

Yikes!

Today I'd like to look a little bit at a topic that's a giant concern to all of us as U.S. citizens, workers, and consumers: the drop in the value of the dollar.  Perhaps you've noticed lately that there's a lot of layoffs going on, a lot of companies are reporting lower earnings, and so forth.

You may also notice that you're paying more for gasoline.  And that economists are talking about how the value of a dollar is declining, possibly at an all-time low once you adjust for inflation and so forth (I've never quite understood how they can accurately come up with that number, but I guess it comes from a formula using the price of products, some calculation about real wages, imports and exports, so on and so forth.  I'm not an economics major and never claimed to be, so I'll leave it to the big guys to determine how that all works.)

You see, we face a pretty tense issue right now.  Seems that our dollars just aren't worth as much as they used to be.  Even the oil industry and OPEC is trying to make the Euro the currency of choice when it comes to the price of oil.  Now, without going into all my conspiracy theories about why this is, let's look at the reality.

Too few people have too many dollars, and too many people have too few dollars.  Let's be realistic here.  A CEO of a major company will often have a severance package in the millions.  I was reading that in 1998, the CEO of Chevron had a $30 million severance package.  The CEO of Home Depot has a $20 million severance package.  As I recall, there was a CEO of a major oil company got $400 million.  $400 million dollars for not doing his job well!  If I go to work and do my job well, I make 36 THOUSAND.  If I get laid off from a job, I'm lucky if I get anything more than a payout of my vacation time.  If anything, the CEO who doesn't do his job should be paying the company back.

Of course, these same companies that offer these humoungous severance packages are also laying a lot of people off.  And what's their concern about the value of a dollar if they're exporting jobs to India and Thailand and China and who knows where else?  They're sleeping easy and have their money.  What's funny is that these same people believe there should be smaller government and less taxes...and want YOU to believe the same thing!

What benefit does a smaller government and a less-taxed rich population have to you?  Think about this...in theory, maybe they could hire more people, give more jobs, give more benefits.  But why would they?  There's no laws or regulations in place to force them to do this.  No, your dinky salary would likely stay the same.  And it's not like you can go elsewhere and earn more.  No, it almost feels like the corporations of the world have gotten together and discussed this thoroughly.  They can't (and won't) raise wages because if they did it could create a competitive imbalance for top talent and cost them more money to acquire the best minds, the best salespeople, the best typists, the best programmers, the best trainers, the best everything.  By keeping wages artificially low, they do more for your bottom line and force you to take whatever job you can get, whatever low-wage you can get, whatever bare-bones benefits you can get (although admittedly, this is better than no benefits at all!)  In effect, when Marx talked about man being dissociated from his labor and unsatisfied with his plight in life, this is what he talked about.  A price is being put on your labor, it's being assigned a value, and that value is lower than what you're worth, lower than the time you've put in in your life acquiring the skills you've acquired and the abilities that you have.  Frankly, most people end up in positions where those skills aren't even utilized.  They acquire new skills, but these skills and these jobs are not as wholly satisfying as the ones they have acquired previously.  Indeed, what is a Sociology major doing training and promoting an automotive industry product?  Maybe I can do this well, but my time would be better spent conducting field research or writing theory.  Alas, this is relegated to blogs and coffee house discussions, and as much social capital as it might buy me, it's not increasing my financial bottom line, which is, unfortunately, a very important thing in this society.

So how does one combat this issue?  How does one "take back" the fair wages and force employers to pay them what they deserve to be paid?  Obviously, going into a job interview and saying "I think you should pay me twice what the job is offering because the CEO of your company made $300 million last year and that's excessive" is not going to win you any friends.  No, the short-term solution, unfortunately, is not that simple (and you won't get the job that way, unless your interviewer is equally disgusted with the situation, likes your gumption, and doesn't mention your personal views to Human Resources.)  I'm still trying to figure it out.  But there are a few scenarios which can be looked at to determine how this could be handled.

1.)  A Socialist revolution.  Yeah, why not overthrow the current economic system?  Rise up, overthrow those in power, unoppress yourself, and take over the means of labor!  But wait, this would require a massive amount of manpower and you would have to be prepared to distribute labor according to the strengths of the people you have.  And how do you do that in a nation of 300 million?  I'm sure it COULD be done, but the vision of a worker's utopia might be severely compromised.  All it takes is one rotten apple to spoil the bunch.

2.)  Work your ass off.  That's right.  Use your day job to earn the bulk of your money and use your nights and weekends to pursue what you love.  Write.  Act.  Perform.  The company can control you from 9-5 (or whatever your hours are,) but they can't dictate to you what you can and can't do off the clock (albeit, there are some things that could probably get you fired if they found out.  Don't do those things!)  Hone your craft, be disciplined, and pursue, pursue, pursue!  Unfortunately, this can cause a great deal of stress and a loss of sleep, so you're going to have to be disciplined and be able to "make time for yourself."

3.)  Everybody could just stop going to work.  "What?"  Well, yeah.  If we have NO workforce,  then we have NO productivity.  The rich can't be rich without a workforce, and if nobody did anything, nobody purchased goods, nobody drove, nobody did ANYTHING...well, someone would have to do SOMETHING!  Effectively, if people just rejected the current economic and social system, in a very short period of time it would cease to exist, creating a state of anarchy and costing the economy and the government trillions of dollars in lost labor, sales, and taxes.

Unless you're looking for a nation-wide revolution of some sort, option 2 is the most feasible.  In a time where your dollar is worth less, it might be time for your sense of self-worth to become higher.  Make impressions where you can and when you can.  Reach out to people.  Network.  Collect a body of writing or a collection of songs or art.  Do something or create something that other people can use.  Get published.  Make your own mark on the world.  Because in a time when "they" have so much and YOU have so little, unfortunately, it takes more than a smile, a job, and an education to make ends meet and make life great.

-Eric